The Federal Government has revived Nigeria’s digital postcode project more than 20 years after it was conceived and has begun integrating it with the National Identification Number as part of efforts to strengthen digital identity, improve service delivery, and enhance address verification nationwide.
The initiative follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Identity Management Commission and the Nigerian Postal Service in Abuja on Friday.
The agreement, signed by the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of NIMC, Abisoye Coker-Odusote, and the Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, formalizes NIPOST’s integration into NIMC’s digital identity ecosystem.
The partnership is expected to expand access to identity services, strengthen identity verification, and support the Federal Government’s digital transformation agenda through a secure, inclusive, and interoperable digital identity system.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, Coker-Odusote said both agencies had already begun integrating postcode retrieval into the NIN platform, enabling Nigerians to verify their addresses and retrieve their digital postcodes from a single trusted platform.
She said, “Our teams have collaborated to integrate postcode retrieval into the NIN platform so that Nigerians will soon be able to confirm their address and retrieve their postcode through one trusted platform. This is designed to make access faster and more convenient for all Nigerians.”
According to her, the National Identification Number establishes who an individual is, while the National Postcode System establishes where the individual can reliably be reached.
She said, “Together, these two national assets create a powerful foundation for inclusive governance and digital transformation.”
The NIMC boss explained that aligning the national identity database with Nigeria’s postcode infrastructure would improve citizens’ access to government services, financial products, healthcare, education, emergency interventions, logistics, e-commerce, and other essential services.
She added that the integration would strengthen planning, enhance transparency, improve beneficiary targeting, and support more effective policy implementation across sectors.
Coker-Odusote disclosed that NIPOST had also been licensed as a front-end enrollment partner for the commission, allowing Nigerians to enroll for the National Identification Number at post offices nationwide.
She said, “The Postmaster General and I sat down a couple of months ago, and what we did was to give them an enrollment license to make them a front-end partner. Nigerians who want to go to post offices can enroll there, and they will capture their details on our behalf.”
Describing the integration as transformative, she said the collaboration would create a national database containing verified identities linked to verified addresses and locations.
“This particular one that we’re also working on is a game changer for the country because now you have the verified identities of individuals with verified addresses and verified locations,” she said.
